Will Marvel Survive the Upcoming Superhero Movie Glut?

Chart stolen from Comicsalliance.com.

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Four studios have now laid out release dates for expanded superhero universe franchises a la Marvel. As that ala indicates, Marvel is the company everyone is seeking to emulate. Even Sony, who’s been fairly successful with their X-Men and related Wolverine movies over many years now.

Here are the players.

20^th Century Fox

Their Characters: The X-Men, Wolverine, other X-Men offshoots and the Fantastic Four.

Fox has been fairly successful with their X-Men and Wolverine movies (barring the hideous Wolverine). This franchise has been rejuvenated by the quite decent First Class and Days of Future Past movies. One thing to watch for that is the amusing fact that the latter film introduced their version of Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch.

Marvel also confusingly can use these characters, and discrete version of them will play major roles in next year’s Avengers: Age of Ultron. Fox has admittedly laid down a gauntlet on this issue. Their Quicksilver was used in one of those rare scenes so joyfully great that it raised the overall level the entire film.

Fox has been rather less successful with their two benighted Fantastic Four films. The first one was lame, but the second was disastrous because it someone replicated an entire raft of the first film’s mistakes. No lessons were learned, and people abandoned the franchise in droves.

However, Fox only owns so many superhero franchises, and so they are going to revive it. Sadly, they are following the Warners/DC plan, and not the Marvel plan. If there is any fun to be had in this film, they are hiding the fact well. Admittedly, it will be based on the Marvel Ultimates* version of the FF.

[*The Marvel Ultimate Universe recreated the Marvel universe from scratch in the 1990s, allowing them to tell stories that had a more modern sensibility as well as to avoid (at that point, anyway) the chains of decades of continuity. It was a great success, and has managed to survive as a discreet entity for a while now, even going so far as to kill Peter Parker and make another young kid Spider-Man. This was a real thing, not the normal, “He’s dead, oh, now he’s not” sort of thing.]

However, the Ultimates FF seems to be more revised than the Avengers were. The Avengers—Hulk, Thor, Captain America, etc.—were quite revised, but also streamlined versions of the same characters. The FF were apparently all turned into teens. That alone is a huge change. It also changes the team’s trademark ‘family’ dynamic; the old Reed Richards (father) and Ben Grimm (uncle), younger wife Sue (mother, sister) and even younger Johnny Storm (brother). Make them roughly the same age and that all goes out the window.

Another controversy is that the guy playing Johnny will be black. Of course, anyone who had a problem with this, even a slight one, was dismissed as a racist by the usual suspects, of which there are many in comic fandom. The leader of this is the otherwise quite good Comicsalliance.com website, who created the chart above. It’s a great site, but their often smug political preening is best avoided.

Here’s my thing. I’m old enough that I have lived through decades and decades of awful adaptations of comic book characters. Even when somebody paid to adapt them, they had so much contempt for that that they changed things willy nilly, under the assumption of “how can possibly care?” (Answer, maybe people who actually decide to watch something called Captain America, or Wonder Woman, or Spider-Man, or even Godzilla, or whatever.)

Comics are comics, and movies are movies, and there are changes that must be made. For instance, although it’s not film related, take when they recreated the Hulk in the ‘90s for the Ultimates Universe. In the ‘60s, the Hulk was created by a massive Gamma Bomb test gone awry.

Well, the military doesn’t really build gigantic bombs anymore. So Bruce Banner was working instead on recreating the Super Soldier serum that created Captain America in World War II. (When he did this, Cap was still frozen and thought dead.)  He experimented on himself in desperation, and the Hulk was born. A far more monstrous version of the Hulk, too, but you won’t see that in the films for obvious reasons.

So that’s a good change. Then there’s…well, turning the Red Skull into an Italian for the bad Cannon Captain America film. There’s no reason to have made that change, and it’s not only stupid and pointless, but downright bewildering.

So since the Fantastic Four is all about family, making Johnny Sue’s half-brother or adopted brother or something is mildly annoying. Why not make Sue black too? Then a large part of the issue goes away. But then black Sue would be dating white Reed and although 99% plus of audiences wouldn’t care, Fox just is not going to go that far.

But for myself, the age thing, and the change of the character dynamics, is what makes this Not My Fantastic Four. Mine has a lot more Stan Lee / Jack Kirby in its DNA. Then there’s the fact that we are apparently getting *sigh* a ‘gritty’ take on the characters, with their powers viewed as disabilities to be overcome, and I’m more than happy to write off the new FF to the kids, just as I have Sony’s new, post-Raimi Spider-Man.

I’m not complaining, I have the Marvel movies, which are not only everything I want them to be, but are actually getting better. I do get the feeling the FF will suck, but maybe it will be great, and if so, good for them. Maybe it will even do well at the box office, although I’ll believe it when I see it. But in any case, as much as I love the FF, I honestly had no dog in this hunt. I would love Pixar to do a traditional FF movie, maybe the Galactic Saga, but meh, whatever.*

I don’t think I’m the only one who smells a loser coming. Fox at one point announced the New Fantastic Four would inhabit a shared cinematic universe with the X-Men. That idea lasted a short while and then pretty much died off. I don’t think Fox wants to taint their successful franchise with a possible loser one. Maybe if the new FF is huge, they will revive the notion. Meanwhile, I’m sure Fox is worried about how much longer Hugh Jackman will be interested in/young enough to continue to play Wolverine.

Announced Slate:

2015:
The Fantastic Four

2016:
Deadpool
X-Men: Apocalypse

2017:
Wolverine 3
Fantastic Four2

2018
Unknown X-Men Movie

In Works/Unannounced Dates
Gambit
X-Force

The X-Men franchises will march on with fair success. Outshoot films like Gambit and X-Force? Don’t know. These are the kind of films that might be hurt worst by the upcoming superhero movie glut.

Highly Uneducated, Half-Assed Predictions: The FF will fail and go away, maybe traded back to Disney for something if the movie utterly bombs. Announcing a sequel to FF before the first comes out is white magic at best. On the other hand, they are clearly planning to strike fast if the iron is hot, given the but two year gap between the first and supposed second film.

Ryan Reynolds returns as Deadpool. He appeared as the character in the atrocious Wolverine, not a good sign. The character is very popular, but will be hard to hit a sweet spot on for a movie. He’s a self-aware character, with much breaking of the fourth wall, and zany in a Loony Tunes way but highly murderous.

I should think their best bet would be to shoot for a Guardians of the Galaxy fun tone, although fans will complain about the reduced murdering thing then. I don’t know, there are a lot of pitfalls with this. If it works, though, it could be huge. And Reynolds has that hugely successful Green Lantern to his credit. (Snarking aside, Chris Evans is great as Captain America despite being in the awful Fantastic Four films.)

 Will All These Movies Get Made? Probably not.

Sony

 Their Characters: Spider-Man, and lots of Spider-Man offshoot characters.

Sony is probably in the worst shape of any of these studio players. They only own the rights to Spider-Man and his associated characters. This is a problem, since although it did OK at the box office ($700 million worldwide on probably a $300 million production / advertising budget), nobody really liked The Amazing Spider-Man 2.

Indeed, Sony is clearly aware it’s come close to killing the golden goose, as they announced a delay before Amazing Spider-Man 3 comes out. It’s now pushed all the way back to 2018, a four year break. In any case, we’ve now had three Spider-Man movies in a row that were generally unloved, following the wonderful Spider-Man 2. That had a staggering 94% positive rating at Rottentomatoes.com; Amazing Spider-Man 2 garnered a tepid at best 53% rating.

Again, the problem is that all of Sony’s aggressive slate of announced super-hero movies are Spider-Man related. When you can barely get people interested in the main character himself, getting people to go see offshoots is a dubious proposition. And in this case a nebulous one.

 Seeking a film based on a female character (they all do this, so I’ll go with it), they have announced…2017’s “Female Lead Spider-Man Spin-Off” movie. Well, that’s got me fired up. I’d guess Spider-Women? Right? Or maybe Black Cat? I don’t know. Hard to see that working, though. I will promise this, though: I will buy a ticket and actually go see it is they actually call it Female Lead Spider-Man Spin-Off.

They are also proving, like Warners, unable to just follow the successful path Marvel took. Their upcoming The Sinister Six movie—based on the first supervillain team assembled to take down their foe, another story I want Disney to make into an animated movie—will featured not six characters already introduced, but a mix of those along with previously unseen (in the movies) characters.

More annoying is that it looks likely they will now all have a shared origin; they were created by Oscorp. I understand why the movies like shared origins, they are very streamlined. I find them lazy and annoying, though. Plus they reduce individuality.

So nobody liked Jamie Foxx as Electro—probably more a problem with this version of Electro than with Foxx—so that’s a bad start. Another *sigh* version of the Green Goblin, who wasn’t even in the Sinister Six. Although if they are created by OsCorp, I don’t see how you get around it.

The Vulture is just a flying guy. You can make anything work, but these guys, based on what they’ve done so far? Probably not. The new Rhino is depressingly just a guy in a robot suit, which isn’t the Rhino. The Sandman is out, making room for the Goblin, no big loss I guess. Hard to see how a new Doc Oct doesn’t bite them, considering how great Raimi’s version was. Kraven the Hunter and Mysterio are potentially terrific characters, but will be hard to make work, and again, I don’t exactly trust the guys making these films.

The character dynamics? Don’t know. I’m not sure how the team works with two ‘leader’ types like Doc Oct and the Goblin. The Rhino is just muscle, which is fine, although again I don’t like the robot suit thing. Kraven is a skill guy, as is Mysterio, although in pleasingly opposite fashions. The Vulture? Again, I’m sure they’ll find something for him to do. Whether it’s interesting or not….

Announced Slate:

2016:
The Sinister Six

2017:
Female Lead Spider-Man Spin-Off
Venom: Carnage

2018:
Amazing Spider-Man 3

Highly Uneducated, Half-Assed Predictions:  Now, I’m only speaking for myself here. Spider-Man is Marvel’s trademark character, as Superman is DC’s. I’m a Marvel guy, and there are Spider-Man comics I love; Lee and Ditko’s original run, Lee and Romita’s subsequent run, the Marvel Team-Up book where Spider-Man got to play with nearly everyone in the Marvel universe. Indeed, Spider-Man is perhaps most fun when he’s paired with other heroes.

That said, Spider-Man is not my favorite character. And I’m 50. I’ve seen a lot of Spider-Man over the years; movies, cartoons, live-action TV. To be frank, the near-perfect Spider-Man II pretty much scratched every itch I had for the character. So when they rebooted the character to make him more modern teen-friendly, it was fine with me.

Again, I don’t have a dog in this hunt. I’m not saying I wouldn’t see another Spider-Man movie ever. However, I don’t really care if I do, and I’m certainly not very interested in these particular films. I wasn’t even interested in Raimi’s movie with Venom (nor was he, apparently), so a movie starring Venom and Carnage…not my bag, man. I’m not saying there’s not an audience, maybe a huge one, but it’s not this 50 year old guy. And that’s fine.

That said, if you can’t really please people with the movies starring your main character, I’m not sure how you get them to support a bunch of films he doesn’t even appear in. Marvel is in a happy place because people do love their films. They have generated good will and can go odd places—Guardians of the Galaxy, for instance—and we’ll come along as long as they keep delivering the goods.

Sony has not delivered the goods.

Will All These Movies Get Made: Although Sony has announced the smallest slate of films discussed, I’d be surprised. If they do, it will only because they are in production already when they start failing. Sinister Six will come out in November of 2016 supposedly, so if it bombs, surely two films supposed to come out in 2017 will already be well into things by then. And they will definitely make another Spider-Man movie, if only to keep the rights from reverting to Disney. The worst case scenario is that the one or two or three preceding spin-offs do so poorly that Sony is forced to reboot Spider-Man a second time. Certainly of the four studio slates discussed here, Sony’s has the best chance of just utterly going down in flames.

 UPDATE: This is crazy. Even as I’m writing this, I see an announcement that Sony is considering an “all-female Spider-Man team-up movie.” Again, one that itself doesn’t actually feature Spider-Man. According to ComicsAlliance.com (following the obligatory politically correct boilerplate); “a new rumor has it that the studio has plans for another female-driven Spider-Man project — one that would feature multiple leading ladies.”

They further report, “It’s not entirely clear what’s going to happen with Sony’s ‘Amazing Spider-Man’ franchise, which was set to launch Sinister Six, Venom and two more Spidey films, but word has it that those plans are crumbling with only Sinister Six still at least firmly in place — and that film, according to recent reports, may or may not feature Spider-Man working with the baddies, and may or may not be a reboot of sorts.*”

It seems like my speculations on the matter weren’t too far off. Certainly Sony’s plans are in clear disarray.

Warner Brothers

OK, here’s where things get interesting. I wrote before about my thoughts on Warners. Their big advantage is that they own DC Comics. And unlike previous owners of Marvel, they haven’t sold the rights to any of their characters, much less their most popular ones, to other studios. Warners owns the rights to ALL the DC characters, and can make films about any of them they want.

However, they are also locked in to one of the major pitfalls of studios making superhero movies. Movie people have often ruined such movies because, again, they have contempt for the medium they’re adapting. This has lessened a lot over the last decades, as studios have learned that it’s better to hire Sam Raimi (excited!) to make your Spider-Man movie than Dean Emmerich (holding his nose) to make your Godzilla movie. (Again, not a comic book film, but you see where I’m going here.)

Warners was wise enough to hire Chris Nolan to make his Batman trilogy, and wiser to let him go off and make them on his own, more or less. However, they learned the wrong lesson from that. If Marvel guy Kevin Fiege knows enough to vary the tone of the Marvel slate and generally when and where to make changes to characters, all Warners knows is GRITTY BATMAN MADE A TON OF MONEY, MAKE EVERYTHING GRITTY! 

They even brought Nolan in to sort of oversee their recent Man of Steel movie. His mandate again was MAKE IT GRITTY! Nolan seemed to have signed on more an as obligation than because he was interested in doing so (he has the movies he actually makes to hold his interest), but he delivered what Warners asked for. Man of Steel made decent coin, if not a giant amount. Enough, however, that Warners will probably continue to learn the wrong lessons.

Caught behind Marvel and now Disney/Marvel—and note that so far Disney has been smart enough to let Marvel go its own way without a long of kibitzing—Warners announced a crazy aggressive slate of movies between now and 2020.  While they are taking 2015 off, and thus ceding the year to Marvel (potentially dangerous), they will then come out with guns blazing. Their first shot, Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice—geez, is that title long enough?—is pretty much assured to be a hit. It has Batman and Superman in the same film, and Wonder Woman to boot, so it pretty much can’t fail.

That doesn’t mean it will necessarily help later movies though. Again, Man of Steel did pretty well, garnering $668,000,000 at the worldwide box office. On the other hand, The Dark Knight made a billion dollars and The Avengers made over one and a half billion, close to a billion more than Man of Steel. Hell, Guardians of the Galaxy outdid Man of Steel by nearly a hundred million, and nobody had ever head of them before.

Anyway, Man of Steel did fine. However, and here’s the problem, not a lot of people loved it. People loving your movie not only makes you more money—surely there were more repeat viewings for Guardians than for MoS—but also is essential for your sequels. And it’s not like you movie has to be great for people to love it. Folks obviously love the Transformers movies, and those aren’t very good.

A lot of people actively disliked Man of Steel, though. So that’s a problem. Again, putting Batman and Superman together is a genius stroke (if an obvious one), so that saves the day for that movie. But if people don’t like that one…then there could be a lot of trouble for their announced two Justice League movies, not to mention their films built around Suicide Squad, Woman Woman, the Flash (different than their current TV Flash, I assume), Aquaman (!!!), Cyborg, Shazam and apparently rebooted Green Lantern.

Warner’s slate is thus the hardest to predict. It could be huge and establish them as a fit rival for Marvel’s or it could just implode. I do think the fact that they’ve announced so many films works against them. All it takes if for one or two of them to bomb to really mess up their momentum. If these grand plans falter, there will be a lot of egg on their faces.

What if nobody really likes Batman vs. Superman, like they didn’t like Man of Steel? That means Wonder Woman might not do well—indeed, that’s possible even if people do like BvS, although it’s more unlikely—and then you have your mega-film The Justice League. If that underperformed, the whole edifice comes crashing down.

On the other hand, they are making a Lego Batman movie. That will make a billion or more by itself. And to tell you the truth, of the 15 (!!) possible movies listed below—including four very tentatively planned ones—it’s the one I’m most likely to see.

2016:
Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice
Suicide Squad

2017:
Wonder Woman
Justice League
Lego Batman

2018:
The Flash
Aquaman

2019:
Shazam
Justice League 2

2020:
Cyborg
Green Lantern

In Works/Unannounced Dates
Sandman
Justice League Dark
Untitled Superman
Untitled Batman

Highly Uneducated, Half-Assed Predictions:  Look, it’s no skin off my nose if all the movies I mention here are huge successes. But my guess? If they actually pursue that GRIM AND GRITTY! thing, it will not end well. Some of these films should be gritty. Suicide Squad, definitely. Really, though, that’s an odd choice for Warners’ first year back. Batman vs. Superman and Suicide Squad? 

Admittedly, Marvel rolled huge dice with the equally/even more obscure Guardians of the Galaxy. However, the trailer for that film indicated it would be the most fun space opera movie since the original Star Wars trilogy. And it was. I’m assuming a lot of demographics saw the trailer for that and signed on.

I’m pretty sure not as many demographics will sign on for a Suicide Squad movie. And what are the odds it will be as good as GotG? Given how many movies are that good in any given year generally, I’d say it’s pretty unlikely. And it surely won’t be as fun. Also, if it’s not super Grim and Gritty, like, R-Rated Grim and Gritty, a predictable segment of comic fans will bitch and make a stink. (Sort of like Fox’s Deadpool.) If it is R-rated, it will turn off mass audiences. Not sure what to think about this. If it sounds good, though, I might actually see this. At least the tone should be right for this one.

Even Shazam, which should be light-hearted if anything is, probably won’t be. They’ve signed the Rock to play Black Adam, the evil version of Shazam. (With Marvel making a movie about their female version of Captain Marvel, don’t expect Warners to use that name. It will just be Shazam.) Evil as in Grim and Gritty Evil. So even this film will probably be Grim and Gritty. Assuming they are still making these movies by 2019.

Will They Make All of These? It’s hard to believe. If they do, then Warners will really, really be doing well, though. As such, they pose the greatest danger to Marvel, not so much that they will eclipse them, but that they will in fact make all these and actually get us to the point where people do get tired of superhero movies, even Marvel’s.

Marvel Studios

Warners announced that slate a while ago, leaving Marvel to only recently get around to announcing the eight (!)  of their “Phase 3” films. (Phase II will end next year with the release of The Avengers: Age of Ultron and Ant-Man.) They are building on the marked success of Guardians of the Galaxy and will continue to center films around new characters.

This is necessary because sooner or later they will start phasing some of the older ones out, with Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark being an obvious candidate. First, Downey like Hugh Jackman may lose interest or just grow too old. Downey is now 49 years old. There comes a point where he’ll have to hang up his helmet. Indeed, they seem to be rushing his next non-Avengers movie to the screen.

Second, he makes a LOT of money now playing Stark. Even in Downey’s case, Marvel’s success is based on the characters, not the actors. This is good, as you want as much of the money on the screen as possible. People say they can’t see another acting playing Stark, but look at James Bond. They might retire him for a bit to allow people to put him out of their minds, but eventually someone else will play the role.

Indeed, Downey’s Iron Man isn’t scheduled for another stand-alone movie. He’ll appear in Avengers: Age of Ultron, of course, and presumably Avengers 3: The Infinity Gauntlet. He’ll also be costarring in Captain American 3 which seems like it will be based on Marvel Comics’ mega-story The Civil War from several years past. Maybe there will be a cameo here and there, but I expect that will basically wrap up Downey’s association with the part.

Meanwhile, they are also introducing new characters in Avengers: Age of Ultron like Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch, who presumably are intended to fill Iron Man’s boots once he takes his hiatus. That’s also how it worked in the comics, with a much de-powered team of Captain America, Quicksilver, Scarlet Witch and Hawkeye taking over after the big guns Iron Man and Thor left early on.

As is the mania of the time, Marvel is branching out with more ethnic and female characters. That’s fine, hell, if they keep making their movies as good as they so far, I’ll see anything they make. And again, Marvel has turned this sort of variety into a real strength instead of just a literally but skin-deep one. Captain Marvel will not only be a female lead, but another military character, only without Cap’s “man out of time” thing. This also sets her up to work with military-themed characters. Not just Cap, but Falcon and War Machine.

The Black Panther will be a black hero carrying his own movie. (Will the Falcon, War Machine and Nick Fury make appearances? Time will tell.) He’s also the king of a crazy super-science African nation. Doctor Strange allows for more of a horror or dark fantasy feel, if they decide to go in that direction. And it seems like they will, because they hired the director of Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose to helm the project. And maybe he’ll go for a trippy Steve Dikto feel? That would be terrific.

Marvel’s done a good job at grounding their movies so far, but with Wakanda (Black Panther’s country) and Doctor Strange in the mix, not to mention the Inhumans, we might start getting more comic book wackiness in the movies. Again, you wouldn’t necessarily want that in everything, but in some of them, sure, why not?

Even so, you have to admire their balls. They are really staking out some fairly minor and/or oddball characters, again probably looking to Guardians as a model. On top of that, I find it odd how many teams Marvel is fielding. With the upcoming Inhumans, that will make three of them.

Anyway, of the upcoming 11 films, 6 are based on previously established franchises (including the two parts of Avengers 3), and the remaining five are entirely new character, at least as far as the movies are concerned. This is pretty cool.

2015:
Avengers: Age of Ultron
Ant-Man

PHASE 3 FILMS

2016:
Captain America: Civil War
Doctor Strange

2017:
Guardians of the Galaxy 2
Thor: Ragnarok
Black Panther

2018:
Avengers: Infinity War Part I
Captain Marvel

2018:
The Inhumans

May 3 2019:
Avengers: Infinity War Part II

Highly Uneducated, Half-Assed Predictions:  Marvels’ done everything right so far. Yes, all human things fail eventually, but damn, so far they are really nailing it. I think this year saw their two best films, barring The Avengers, of course. And one was their grittiest—though still extremely fun—film, and the other their funniest. That right there is the sign of an organization doing things right.

It will be interesting to see how they deal with their first failure, whenever that happens. Chances are they will roll right along on the strength of all their other franchises, though.

They continue to cast well, getting actors who are both appropriate for the part and talented to boot. Benedict Cumberbatch (assuming he is in fact cast) is a good choice for Dr. Strange. I don’t know the guy playing Black Panther, but I assume he’ll be great. (We know he can carry a movie, since he played Jackie Robinson in 42.) I also assume they’ll be smart enough not to cast some teeny waif as Captain Marvel.

They are also smart enough to strike while the iron is hot. This year’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians were both well-loved and huge hits, so they are returning to screens in an expedited fashion. Indeed, Captain America 3 will be out following a mere two year break. Again, this might also be to squeeze in Robert Downey Jr. between Avengers films.

They continue to do the crossover thing right. Black Panther will appear in CA3, too, before getting his own movie. Hell, maybe Captain Marvel will as well.

At this point in time Superhero Fatigue does seem the biggest threat to Marvel. Whatever happens, though, its sure that Marvel will last the longest of the various contenders, and the one who made the best movies.

Will They Make All of These? Yep.